The Narrow Road to the Deep North’s ending was about Dorrigo Evans coming to terms with the fact that he was an adulterous sleazeball, and that the horrors that he had faced in the jungles of Thailand will never leave him. I mean, I guess that was the case. The accents were too thick, the visuals were too fuzzy, and the storytelling was too dull to make me give a damn about what was going on on the screen. Most of the time the show oscillated between screams of pleasure (Jacob Elordi fans will be satisfied) and screams of pain (bummer), and everything in between was tepid. From what I could gather, the 1940s side of the narrative focused on Dorrigo trying his best to keep his men alive while they were forced to build the Burma-Thailand Railway by the Japanese under the leadership of Major Nakamura and Captain Fukuhara. The flashbacks also highlighted Dorrigo’s relationship with his girlfriend, Ella Evans, and his romance with Uncle Keith Mulvaney’s wife, Amy. Meanwhile, in the present day, Dorrigo faced a similar conundrum as he was married to Ella, but having an affair with his friend and colleague Rick Maison’s wife, Lynette. Additionally, he was the subject of an internal investigation at the hospital he worked at for not following protocol while performing surgery on a cancer patient. What was the point of all this? What was the fate of these characters? Well, allow me to try and figure it out.
Spoiler Alert
Amy Was Probably Alive
Dorrigo was poised to marry Ella because they were apparently in love. Ella’s family was incredibly wealthy, and, I guess, Dorrigo also came from a relatively privileged background. But since Ella liked to show off Dorrigo like he was her prized possession, and even got him to flaunt his military lifestyle (which was certainly not something to be glorified), he began developing a certain level of disdain towards her. That’s just an assumption, because we don’t see the complete trajectory of the falling out between the two and their eventual marriage. Okay, while Dorrigo was in a relationship with Ella, he went back to his hometown to spend some time with his uncle, Keith. There, he formed a deep romantic bond with Keith’s wife, Amy. By the time Keith found out about this affair, Dorrigo had been sent away on a military assignment, which eventually made him a prisoner of war in the jungles of Thailand. Now, while he was stuck there building the Burma Railway with his platoon, he got a letter that revealed that both Keith and Amy had died under mysterious circumstances. Hence, when Dorrigo returned to Australia, he married Ella and put Amy in the rearview mirror. However, after moving to Sydney with his newly wedded wife, according to Dorrigo, he did see Amy and her child.
So, was Amy alive, or was that scene just a figment of Dorrigo’s imagination? Was Dorrigo the father of the child that Amy was walking with? What was the point of these romantic subplots? To be really honest, the answer to all three of those questions is I have no clue. We never saw what actually happened to Amy and Keith. It’s possible that Keith learned that Amy was pregnant with Dorrigo’s child and decided to commit a murder-suicide. Maybe Amy survived and started a life all on her own to provide for her child. She probably knew that Dorrigo had married Ella, and in order to avoid brewing further complications in his life and her own, she chose to stay away. Or maybe Amy was dead and Dorrigo was hallucinating because, despite marrying Ella, he was still in love with Amy. With all that said, am I supposed to sympathize with Dorrigo because he was torn between the uptight upper-class girl and the “free-spirited” girl who was technically upper class as well because she was married to someone as affluent as Keith? No matter how you cut it, Dorrigo was a cheater (so was Amy), and, at the end of the day, he chose to marry the rich girl who was alive instead of staying perpetually single to commemorate the dead rich girl so as to build his medical career and live in a posh house. And I didn’t feel enough of the supposed chemistry between Dorrigo, Amy, and Ella to care about their relationships.
Nakamura and Fukuhara Weren’t Punished
Whenever I have to talk about historical facts, I put up the disclaimer that my history is extremely weak. So, if I make any mistakes, please, forgive me. With that out of the way, let’s get down to brass tacks. During World War II, the Empire of Japan was trying to invade British-occupied Burma, and they decided to build a rail line between Thailand and Burma. An estimated 352,000 civilians and soldiers were sacrificed to make that possible, out of which 13,004 were Australians. Starvation and death due to disease were commonplace. Certain POWs kept somewhat detailed accounts of the incidents that happened there by using toilet paper as their canvas, human hair as paintbrushes, and sap from plants and blood (human or animal) as paint. That was eventually used to indict Japanese officers for committing war crimes. The Narrow Road to the Deep North largely focused on the platoon that Dorrigo (influenced by real-life POW Edward Dunlop) was a part of and the atrocities they were subjected to by Major Nakamura, Captain Fukuhara, the Goanna (Choi Sang-min was his actual name, I guess), and the Japanese as well as Korean soldiers under their command. Dorrigo tried to keep the prisoners of war alive with the help of the limited supplies that were at his disposal, but he failed because he was tackling environmental factors, lack of nutrition, crude medical techniques, and straight-up torture.
Now, while most of the on-screen deaths happened under “natural” circumstances, the 2 deaths that came at the hands of the Japanese were those of Tiny Middleton (who was beheaded by Fukuhara) and Frank Gardiner (who was lashed endlessly by the Goanna and then drowned in rainwater). When the war ended and those in charge of the construction of the Thai-Burma Railway were tried, Choi was sentenced to death. Nakamura and Fukuhara hid in Japan, avoiding punishment, debating whether they had been treated properly after committing so many war crimes for the Empire. Since the miniseries has been depicted from the perspective of the Australians, they’ve been painted as victims, which they undoubtedly were in this case. But during a conversation with Dorrigo, the question of Australia’s involvement in the expansion of the British Empire was brought up. Fukuhara even mentioned the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, did any of that justify what the Japanese did during World War II? Well, no, obviously. As explained in a documentary called War and Justice, the act of beginning a war is a crime of the highest order. But if a country’s reaction to said instigation is equally or more vile, then what even is the difference between the instigator and the one who is retaliating? They both become equally heinous, they both regress humanity by several decades, and all those partaking in war crimes in the name of justice or in the pursuit of power should be punished, not treated like war heroes.
Dorrigo Died In A Traffic Collision
During The Narrow Road to the Deep North’s ending, while returning from the event where his book on his experiences as a POW was launched, Dorrigo got into a traffic collision and died. A few moments before that happened, he had come to the realization that his family shouldn’t bear the brunt of what he had faced in the jungles of Thailand. What Dorrigo had endured at the hands of the Japanese and the Koreans was undoubtedly awful. But was he justified in using that as an excuse to cheat on Ella (a second time) with Lynette and display an annoying level of arrogance on the operating table? No, I don’t think so. The makeshift medical techniques that he had used to save his comrades in Thailand had evidently made him a better surgeon than all those professionals who had solely practiced with sophisticated tools. Yes, he needed to break protocol to save the cancer patient. However, what was he actually trying to prove by being rude? The people in the hospital where he worked surely didn’t send Dorrigo to the war. They didn’t torture him or his mates. And while he was owed respect for his contributions during World War II, it’s idiotic to expect it to be unwavering. Yeah, he got to prove that his methods were sound, but he lost a lot of respect in the eyes of the colleagues who idolized him.
Speaking of respect, he put a big dent in his reputation by sleeping with Lynette, despite knowing that Ella and Rick were aware of his adultery. When one does something like that, it doesn’t really matter what they’ve endured during a war, at least in my eyes. I know that some uber-patriots will claim otherwise, but if Dorrigo was so haunted by his past, and if he disliked Ella so much, he could’ve become a hermit and stayed as far as possible from society. Did he do that? Nope. He yearned for the limelight. He chose to stay in that marriage. He opted to be a cheater. And by the time he realized that it wasn’t worth it and he should dedicate whatever life he had left in his body and soul to his family, it was all too late. During Dorrigo’s dying moments, he saw his younger self in the jungles of Thailand, probably thinking how he could’ve done things differently, as the light faded from his eyes. I suppose he should take solace in the fact that, after his death, everyone will be free of the negative influence he had on them, especially Ella and Amy. Yes, he’ll be remembered as a great war hero by people who only know him from afar, and his book sales will skyrocket, but those closest to him will probably heave a sigh of relief. Anyway, those are my thoughts on the ending of the insanely boring The Narrow Road to the Deep North. What are your opinions on the same? Let me know in the comments below. If you have read the Richard Flanagan book, please tell us how Justin Kurzel’s miniseries fares as an adaptation.
